A high school student landed her first summer job working in a drugstore.  As she arrived at the store for her first day on the job, the phone was ringing.  Everyone was busy and the manager asked her to please…

As he lay dying, a father gave a watch to his son.  “Here is a watch your grandfather gave me,” he said.  “It is almost 200 years old.  Go to the jewelry store and see how much they offer you.”…

Good old Charlie Brown from the “Peanuts” cartoon fame had a hard time understanding the value of taking aim at his goals while shooting his bow and arrow in his back yard into the fence.  After shooting an arrow he…

Once a young man asked Socrates about the secret to success, so Socrates invited the young man to meet him at the river the next morning.  They walked hand-in-hand into the water up to their necks when the Greek philosopher…

There is a wonderful Japanese word, “nemawashi,” whose rough translation is to “prepare the roots.”  Although the word was borrowed from famously patient Japanese gardeners, every Japanese businessperson understands its meaning. A gardener would use the term “nemawashi” to describe…

One of the things I’ve missed most during the pandemic is getting together and networking.  Networking is part of my DNA.  No cocktail parties, fundraisers, association meetings and so on for the last couple years has been troubling for me…

A Russian poet who was visiting a wealthy American in his home noticed a huge, magnificent moose head mounted on the wall.  He asked his host how he could shoot such an impressive animal. “It was easy,” said the American. …

When Paulo Coehlo’s novel “The Alchemist” was first published in 1988, it went unnoticed.  He sold only one copy the first week.  Unperturbed, Coelho confidently waited for more sales to come in, but he waited a long time.  Six months…

Suppose you have five birds sitting on a wire and three of them decide to fly.  How many birds would you have left on the wire? Five birds remain.  Making a decision to fly without acting on the decision gets…

A giant ship’s engine failed, and the vessel’s owners consulted one expert after another, but none of them could fix the engine.  They finally brought in an old man who had been fixing ship engines since he was very young. …